The present invention relates to a technique for assisting schedule adjustment using emails, and particularly to a technique for automatically creating a summary of multiple reply mails replied to a schedule inquiry mail.
A web-based application program having calendar and scheduling functions has been known conventionally, such as Lotus (trademark) Notes (trademark). There is also known a schedule adjustment system that allows users to communicate with each other through emails to make adjustment of participants' schedules (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2000-29939).
Schedule adjustment using such an application program as Lotus (trademark) Notes (trademark) works on the premises that the participants use such a common special application program.
Moreover, in order to allow a meeting organizer to check the schedules of other users, such application program requires pre-authorization of the meeting organizer for accesses to the calendars of the other users, or requires a group registration of all the participants.
On the other hand, the schedule adjustment system using emails makes adjustment on meeting arrangement by performing the following control: meeting schedule is arranged tentatively based on information on the meeting using a meeting room and based on a result of search that a meeting-room reservation system makes in reference to that information; the tentative meeting schedule is sent through an e-mail to terminals associated with the meeting schedule adjustment; and then the meeting schedule is rearranged on a result of interpretation of a reply from each of the terminals in response to the sent meeting schedule. Accordingly, this system allows people not using the special application program to be included as participants.
In the above schedule adjustment system, however, the reply from each of the prospective meeting participants is processed by extracting availability, a list of candidate dates and times, and a meeting arrangement ID from reply items inputted in the reply mail or through a browsing software. In other words, the prospective meeting participants are required to input their replies in a predetermined format in a predetermined field in their reply mails or on a screen of the browsing software. Accordingly, the prospective meeting participants are not allowed to reply in free format. A reply not in the predetermined format is not processed or causes an error.